The Do It Yourself Pad Thread

[Discoman]

[jimmit]

[devout]

I've used birch plywood before... it's pretty good stuff. i'd say it's my plywood of choice when I want it to have a nice looking surface. I've never tried staining it though... i'd be a little concerned since the birch veneer is so thin... but I guess it works. I mean, they do sell just rolls of hardwood veneer, and i'm guessing people wouldn't buy them if you couldn't stain it.

[ChilliumBromide]

According to the guy I talked to at Lowe's, if nobody's looking at it, use fir. It's stronger and cheaper than birch. For the visible parts of the pad, however, the Baltic Birch is a good choice.
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I used to be active here lol

[Mateui]

Well, as of last night my DDR pad is finally complete! It took just about two weekend's worth of work, spread apart by 2 weeks since my brother in law who was working on the construction aspects with me was away for those 14 days.

Anyway, I'll post some photos since I know people love looking at other homebuilt pads (as do I!)

First off, here's the awesome soldering job my brother-in-law did on the controller. He drilled a hole right in the middle between the arrow copper circles and this allowed the wire to come through the back. He also drilled a hole in the back of the controller, put the wire through it and closed the controller back up again. All the buttons still work on the controller (minus the arrow buttons which are controlled via the pad obviously).




Unfortunately I did not take photos in the early construction process, but I basically used Weston's wonderful design. Here is a photo of the pad with the sensors being put in and in their early (non-functional) stages.




On the above image notice the center of the pad. One thing we didn't like about many of the homepad designs was that all the wires ran through the Up arrow and we prone to be damaged as that arrow was stepped on. To circumvent this problem we drilled a pathway on the bottom of the pad for the CAT5 wire, and then drilled a hole in the center to allow the wires to come up there and branch off from that center point. This way wires won't be as prone to wear down.

Let's zoom closer in and examine an arrow well.


The material that pushes the arrow back up when you step on it is not a mouse pad as you can tell, but rather a spongy material that I cut up. It originally was a child's puzzle foam piece. (Spongebob if you look closely ) You can get about a dozen of these foam pieces for only a $1 at the Dollar store, and one of them cut up provides you with 7 suitable strips. This is way cheaper then a mousepad. However time will tell how well they fare in the long run.

The sensor is basically a Matrix design. The bottom bracket is drilled into the base secured by 2 screws on opposite ends. An identical bracket is then drilled into the wodden arrow panel above it also with 2 screws. When the screws touch the circuit is closed. (There are currently only 2 screws on most of the sensors since we ran out of those specific screws. We actually used the screws that came with the Stanley brackets.)

Ok, now let's put the wooded panels back on the pad:

Instead of paying Staples some amount of money to have them print off 11 by 11 inch arrow graphics, I decided to print my own arrows, cut them out, and then place them directly onto the wooden panel. Before that however, I painted each panel a nice velvety black.

And finally, here's the final product in all it's glory:

I went with ITG graphics (even though I have never played ITG) simply because I liked how they looked better than DDR's arrow graphics. I used photoshop to edit the typical red arrows and made them green instead. I think that the green & blue look pretty nice on black.

And here's an angled shot:


The hardest part of the whole process was getting the wooden and plexiglass panels to fit into the arrow wells without getting stuck and finding the balance between too little movement to too much.

The pad itself works great but I feel that it needs to be broken in first. That, or I'm going to have to add more screws into the sensors to make the more sensitive (or raise them up a bit.) My sister actually fell off the pad yesterday when we were testing it, so I think we'll be making borders around the pad for protective and aesthetic reasons.

I'd like to thank Riptide for his awesome videos, Weston for his outstanding tutorial, Matrix for his great sensor design, and the rest of people posting in the Homebuilt pad thread that provided me insight into the whole process. I couldn't have done it without you guys. The whole pad making experience went by extremely smoothly. I can't wait to do it again to make a pad for doubles play.

[MasterInuYasha]

Has anyone attempted to use 3/8'' thick panels? I am. Using my TXs old Frame/platform

[samtorx]

Mateui where'd you get the arrow graphics? im considering doing that cuz im just gona leave the plexiglass without graphics and unglued lol

[Mateui]

I'll upload a WinRAR folder with some ITG graphics in it.

Here:
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/134008/ArrowDecals-rar.html

[Weston]

Excellent, Mateui! I'd love to see your setup if you decide to go with two pads.

[ChilliumBromide]

I got some solder today. When I get home tomorrow I'll take my prototype back out into the garage, solder the wires proper; maybe switch a thing or two up with the panels to make them more solid and consistent, and then I'll flood this place with vids and pics.
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I used to be active here lol

[LightningXCE]

You used my arrows =3

Look amazing! Major, major props for that!

Now get making some videos!
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=o!

[slvrshdw]

Hey, thought I'd finally post a link to my tutorial and other homebrew ddr stuff now that i have it

(although its not quite done, as of 4-12-07)

www.ddr.animearchivez.com

anyway, i will get videos on there once i get them, so anyone who is curious about homepads...this is a good place for you
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[Ghettobarney]

OMG DDR PAD! I only got in one pic cuase my battery died


Other stuff

Cost 80$
Sheetmetal contacts.
1 1/4'' thick.
Bar- little shaky but solid.
6 days construction time!
I have 2 so now I can do doubles. The up arrow is a little janky but I can fix it. Should've gone with Lexan though, you cant see it but it's kinda cracked where the screws are. I'm happy though.
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OMG I BEETS MACKS 300!

[ChilliumBromide]

I think the DT600 prototype will get the award for ugliest homebrew of 2007.

DDR pads: ugly poopy when you take off all the cosmetic stuff.
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I used to be active here lol

[RespectJSB]

[The Wise Fool]

So I was wondering about bars on homepads.

I remember there was this thing on the Cobalt Flux forums:
http://www.cobaltflux.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5304&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20
but the Cobalt Flux forums are borked.

I want to make a bar with my homepad, but I'm not sure what I should make it out of.
I don't want to have to have support struts coming out the back. If I use metal pipe for my bar, will that be necessary? I'll be screwing it into 3 sheets of 1/2'' plywood, two of which will be going inside the pad, holding it together.

[psisarah]

I wanted to completely reconstruct my pad (poor baby is almost two years old now) and decided to switch from sheet metal sensors to something like this. I went to Home Depot, and they only had about 10 of those little plates. What they did have were corner braces, so I decided to experiment.



This works a bit differently in the sense that the corners connect to register a step, not the whole brace.





As I was installing the sensors I realized it would probably be a better idea to have them aligned this way, to increase sensitivity towards the center of the arrow. With the sheet metal sensors I had a lot of problems with holds and hands (being a 135 lb girl who plays on her toes didn't help) but these are super-sensitive. I don't have the pad completed yet since it's taking longer than I expected, but I should have it done in another day or two.
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[Bao_zeR]